| In a discussion of the Israeli security fence at another site, an interesting - and ironic - parallel was drawn.
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mberst of Michigan:
Inhabitants were used for slave labor, but under that ruse the Germans were also deporting people to Treblinka and killing them. When word leaked back to the walled ghetto about what was actually happening to the "laborers," a resistance movement formed in the ghetto.
The first resistance was in January 1943, when Warsaw ghetto fighters opened fire on German troops rounding up inhabitants, and after a few days of fighting, the German troops were forced to retreat.
On April 19, 1943, the major Warsaw ghetto uprising began when German troops and police re-entered the ghetto to attempt to round up victims again. Over a thousand resistance fighters, including children, fought the heavily armed and well-trained Germans to a standstill with homemade Molotov cocktails and small arms. They hid in the sewer system and tracked the movements of the German troops, emerging to trap and surprise German units and then vanishing back into the sewers.
In desperation the Germans finally brought in major fire power and proceeded to bombard the ghetto with artillery, setting much of it on fire and reducing most of the buildings to rubble. Still the resistance fighters carried the fight to the Germans from the ruins. The ruins gave snipers more hiding places and made German troop and armor movements more difficult.
The Germans flooded the sewers, and then pumped poison gas into them, but the fighters kept one step ahead of them and fought on. It took about a month to put an end to the major fighting, but pockets of resistance continued, and it required months of work by the Germans to comb through the ruins block by block and kill the last of the freedom fighters.
Some German photos of the uprising survived the war.
Photos of the Warsaw Uprising |
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T.K. Wilson of Missouri remarked after reading this:
I find it interesting that people who ought to have a horror of fences are putting others behind them.
It is such an incredibly shortsighted non-solution, it will not be long before it blows up in their faces [literally]. |
Obviously the Jews in the ghetto were fighting for their lives, not "just" for land. I'm certainly not suggesting the two situations are the same. Nonetheless, if you look at the photos of the uprising, one can't help but see some similarity to the images TW posts here... | |
